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Seasoned SEO vet since 1999 - Focussing on technical aspects of SEO, SEO Auditing, Penalty Reversal & Linkbuilding (if I must!). Great believer that a large part of SEO is content driven.
Visit www.iqseo.uk for more information on the range of freelance services that I offer.

I love ecomm optimisation - those moments when a client sees a spike in conversions gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside :)

With your questions Rand...

1) I like to show clients https://www.lyft.com/drive-for-lyft as an example of a wonderfully simple landing page with a big call to action. I especially like the 'See how much you can make' - as a species, we're nosy, so this makes it very simple to dig into what else we can make money doing.

2) I have seen many different changes increase conversions and find it depends a lot on who the audience is. Tailor a message to empathise with someone at an emotional level and hook them in with what they want to see or hear. I don't mean just changing the colour of a 'Buy Now' button, but I have seen a change in page position have an impact.

One of the more recent changes I saw was actually quite straight forward - de-clutter the focus areas on the page. There were too many tiled images that pushed the information further down the page, and that information was just a lump of text.

Changing to a small image slider, pulling CTA next to this and all product options above the fold, saw a 19% increase in conversions

There are so many myths about link building that get out of hand - then you get some dodgy company who doesn't have a clue, advise (incorrectly) an unsuspecting client who can only read what looks like what they have been told. Next thing, they are missing opportunities left, right and centre.

Building a 10-page (or more) website from scratch, it would have to be one helluva website for them to be able to learn UX from it as well, as this is something that you can't teach in a few short lessons - especially with everything else they have to do above.

But, if you have found that this has worked for others in the past, then fantastic - I just think we would go about this part a very different ways :)

I do know where you're coming from David but unless there was a really good reason for this (aside from empathy), I just can't see that the lessons they would learn would be a major benefit - but that might just be me and how I would go about it.

However, it is incredibly important to have at least a basic understanding of HTML for any SEO. You need to be able to spot issues when looking at code.

I would also be looking at giving them a strong grounding in UX as well because usability is huge in SEO - being able to help a page convert is as important as it appearing well in the SERPs.

A very nice list, but create a website by hand? That to me sounds much more like it is a design / developer role. I think you would need to decide what you would intend the 'junior' SEO would be doing for a business.

Considering how important content and links are to Google, it's a shame there is not more about this, and there is no mention of Rankbrain at all.

But if I pay a publicist $1000 to try to persuade a few journalists to write articles that happen to contain links to my website, then I am not directly paying -- I am paying for the publicist's time and that is an indirect result because the journalists are the ones who ultimately decide whether to write the articles and whether to include links.

I just finished reading the whole raters guide and looking at every example. It really is very interesting and every SEO should take the time to look at this, but certainly the major points above cover the most important parts.

What it outlines is that most people are failing if they think an average article is going to cut it - it wont! You need to get creative - answer questions - write something that hasn't been written before - don't stop at 500 words (in fact, don't stop at 1000!) - write what had a good chance to be shared (and linked!) - Research!

This is something I find is very important because some clients want the earth, then suddenly realise that they aren't being realistic with regards their goals and skills to produce something that is going to deliver.

So few SEO's have practical guides for log file analysis, and although I know there are some out there, this is about as comprehensive as I have read. There is nothing more that I can add to this as it is pretty much what I already do.

Brand does a lot more than it used to and when link building now, I always try to mix it up where I can. Many sites I have found to be more accepting of a mention rather than a link and has resulted in some nice branding. It can never hurt!

Hit the nail on the head with most things here Paddy. However, I was a little disappointed not to see something around brand mentions / cocitations / implied links, as I have had some amazing results from these myself, certainly over the last 12 months.

I do agree 100% about needing a 'linkable asset' in order for someone to want to link to /mention you and there are so many possibilities of what this can be. Sometimes the site / service itself can be enough - other times a little work is needed to create them.

I'm kinda sitting on the fence with this. As Cyrus said, disproving myths is always a good thing - how it's done will always add credibility, as long as you aren't seeming to oust others in the process. Then it can almost seem like 'who can get one over on the other first'.

That said, I recall Matt Cutts saying some time back that the number of signals each ranking factor can contain was running into the hundreds. If memory serves, the example he gave at the time was for internal links and the sheer number of signals it contained.

Facebook was bound to change tact at some point, but the use of Links & Photos has been something that has been increasing in popularity for some time now. I try to make a habit of doing this myself and when posting an update related to a page, I will post a photo (of the page, or something related), a description, and then a link through to that page within the description.

Engagement has always been higher than just posting a link, but it does help to mix it up a bit from time to time.

Sorry to disagree with some that say this is going to confuse SEO even more. For me, this is going to weed out some of the 'so-called' SEO's out there and make way for others who can actually make this work for customers.

Embrace it people because it's here to stay and will only get deeper roots as we tread along the SEO path.

I am in a very similar situation for one of my customers right now and after thinking about what they are trying to achieve, I will be recommending that we go down the route of purchasing the individual .de, .fr, etc domains, get hosting within that country and the best possible chance to achieve a brand and reputation of being international.